What Fools We Linuxers Be

We're thinking of a very special edition of "Foolish Things We Do With
Our Computers". If you did something foolish, or had something foolish
inflicted upon you by your otherwise favored silicon lifeform, and
you're willing to have just a little more fun with it in public, send
it along to us.

This does not have to be in article format. You can just send it to
The Answer Gang (tag, at our happy domain linuxgazette.net) with the
subject "Foolish Things With Computers" and we'll gather them all up and
roast marshmallows over them. Let us know if you want your name left
in - we'll take these anonymously too. But don't just make them up; we
want real tales that make us groan and go agh I won't do that again!

Articles about voice

In the issues numbered about 85 to 89 we had articles about the use of
voice on computers in developing areas, for hadicapped usage, and the
like.

Sound systems on Linux have improved considerably - we've had Jimmy
cover "Songs In the Key of Tux" - but we haven't come back to the topic
of ordinary voices. Voice Over IP got a mere nod in my Answer Gang
blurb last Summer.

Knight's tour

and thanks for your amusing article about the Knight's tour in
Linux Gazette. I don't understand Python, but I have some
experience of the Knight's tour problem.
Mathematicians might have annoying habits, and one could be
to end their articles with Exercises
Like:
4.There is apparently a better algorithm than Warnsdorff's for the
Hamiltonian circuit. Find it and implement it.

RW "Quick Format"...

Here's a reply to my posting of the Packet Writing material on my own
site. I've gotten his permission to forward this into TAG as commentary
on the original, so if you want to use it... ?

best,

.brian

Hi Brian,

Actually the time for UDF formatting of a CDRW is consistant with Nero's
packet driver (InCD) under Windows. InCD used to have multiple selections of
"Format" and "Quick Format" available but only the "Format" option was
available for a BLANK CDRW disk and formatting could take up to 45min to an
hour. A previous formatted UDF disk would let you "quick format" and take
considerably less time; some times as short as 6min.

Of course, I suspect the "quick format" is really only doing a quick erase
and random verify of the file system. This would be similar to a 'quick
erase' of a CDRW disk which was written/formatted as an iso -- erase the
header and directory structure but don't bother with rest of data (i.e. lets
hope the surface, etc. is OK and we'll just overwrite for the new
compilation).

I had a Mount Ranier capable CDRW drive at one point and I noticed that it
worked a bit differently. Apparently MR drives can format and write "at the
same time" and also do formatting in the background. So, when using MR
(instead of UDF 1.5) it appeared only the disk headers and directory
structure was initially formatted. Then, as data was sent to the drive (by
"drag and drop" or whatever) it was cached and buffered, then the space
needed was formatted and written to in the background. When the disk was
ejected a significate delay occured while anything left in the cache was
written out to disk and the disk cleaned up. It appeared that only as much
of the disk was actually formatted as needed because you could "force" a
full disk format in MR and it would take about as long to complete as a
format as UDF.

Users should also be aware that UDF file systems are much, much less safe
than standard iso compilations. They are more effected by heat. Not all UDF
file systems are equal -- especially now that various revision levels are
out (UDF1.5 appears to be "standard recommended" while there were revisions
up to 2.5 last time I looked). In practice I've found that using packet
writting is tends to work only for the computer/drive you write it on and
only for relatively short term storage.

Note the fact that Windows XP's setup for CD writing uses a disk buffer and
writes only a iso. It simulates a "drag and drop" random access file system
by mapping the CDRW disk to the buffer (actually a system folder called "cd
burning") and then just burns asks to burn a standard iso. For adding to a
written disk it appear to load what is already on disk to the buffer adding
to the new files then erase the CDRW disk and re-burn it. I suspect even
good old Microsoft figured the odds of including UDF packed writing would be
adding another can of worms to XP.

David Yerka

PS: I have been testing Xandros OC 3.0.1 and I find I like it quite a bit. I
didn't find 2/2.5 really ready for an average business user but Xandros 3
looks to be a true MS desktop killer. A number of my clients are fed up with
paying through the nose for Windows "upgrades" -- some really feel MS
tugging the chain -- so they are very interested. I even have one office
where the practice management application will run under Crossover Office --
and the developers have decided to commit to a Linux version for release
next year.

Rob Tougher's article, issue 96

This was pretty good article but it seems to leave out something.
Because of that I've had hours of pain.
Perhaps a note could be added.

Here is what seems to be missing:
setting up AXIS_HOME, AXIS_LIB, and AXIS_CLASSPATH, as in

set AXIS_HOME=c:\axis
set AXIS_LIB=%AXIS_HOME%\lib
set AXISCLASSPATH=%AXIS_LIB%\axis.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\commons-discovery.jar;
%AXIS_LIB%\commons-logging.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\jaxrpc.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\saaj.jar;
%AXIS_LIB%\log4j-1.2.8.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\xml-apis.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\xercesImpl.jar
;%AXIS_LIB%\wsdl4j.jar

On March 25, 2005, I download some files from TLDP. My download script shows a time stamp of 9:10PM, which downloaded the entire ftpfiles directory at linuxgazette from my home LAN at 66.218.50.80.

I have a WinXP notebook attached to a wireless access point. After downloading some Linux Gazette tarballs from http://linuxgazette.net/ftpfiles, my security scanners show an active suspicious port open. I could telnet into port 5400 on WinXP from my FreeBSD box over my LAN.

Can somebody look into this? It never happened to me...
Please confirm if this is fake or not.

What you have there is a pair of false positives. I'm not sure what in
Linux Gazette issue 86 Clamwin thought was an instance of
"Exploit.IFrame.Gen", which I gather is an MS-Outlook exploit. The
Gazette has a feature near the end of many issues where the text of
particularly hilarious spam and/or virus mail is published and mocked,
so that might well be it.

I would guess that the "HTML.Phishing.Bank-1" Clamwin thought it found,
I'd guess it was (likewise) erroneously triggering on the "Spam
Cuteness" item in Jimmy O'Regan's "Linux Launderette" column.

Brian, there's nothing wrong with paying close attention to your
anti-virus software if you're on MS-Windows, but you'll want to read the
results with at least a little skepticism: For one thing, given that
the Linux Gazette files are a magazine, and that you read the contents
rather than executing it as a program, it's unclear to me how -- even if
every issue were packed chock-a-block with MS-Windows worms, trojans,
viruses, and exploits -- those could have been anything but inert
curios.

You may indeed have an alarmingly open "port 5400" on your MS-Windows XP
box, of course -- for entirely independent reasons. Good luck with that.